The widespread availability of computers and software applications has given organizations a powerful tool with which to create and access information. Within one organization, computers may be used by marketing, sales, accounting, management, maintenance, manufacturing, engineering, research, and other branches of the organization. Within one branch of an organization (e.g., marketing), users may predominately use one set of applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, presentation applications, and the like. Within another branch of the organization (e.g., engineering), users may predominately use other applications such as CAD programs, modeling programs, mathematical programs, and the like. Some applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets, and the like, may find widespread use throughout an entire organization. With these applications, users may generate and access a tremendous amount of information.
The information generated by users in the various branches of an organization may be stored in many locations. For example, some users may store some information on the hard drive of their personal computers. Other users may store information on a server that is accessible by users in their group. Many users may store information in a variety of locations, including local hard drives, peer hard drives, and local and distant servers. Within one company, there may be thousands of computers and hundreds of servers, each having a portion of the company's intellectual property.
Some information may be stored in managed storage solutions that automatically keep track of revisions to stored objects and may enforce a business process. Other information may be stored in unmanaged storage where users keep track of revisions to objects by file names, text within each stored item, meta-data, and the like and use ad-hoc business processes. The method for identifying revisions may vary from branch to branch, location to location, or even from user to user.
With the wealth of information available from so many sources in disparate locations, finding and accessing all the information that is relevant to a particular project, process, product, or the like often taxes even the most organized organizations. In addition, organizations are severely challenged with bringing unmanaged information under managed control in an easy manner. What is needed, then, is a method and system to easily find, access, connect, and share information. Ideally, the method and system would provide an easy way bring unmanaged information under management by the system as needed.